Personal Review of Nokia N8-00

Ok, it's been more than a week since I was given a N8 for keeps by Nokia, and I had put aside my Android phone to use the new Nokia flagship for a proper user review.

I had configured the phone to be up for my daily use, including my office work. My use of this phone on normal days are mainly:

- Internet surfing (a lot)
- Social-Networking (regularly)
- SMS and making/receiving calls (duh)
- Checking emails (office and personal)
- Taking photos and videos
- Watching movies on the go
- Playing games on the go
- Listening to Music
- letting colleagues/friends play with the phone prior to its launch

So my review will be based on my usage and also will make some comparison with Android so that Nokia will understand what they are really lacking and improve on it (if they are reading this blog that is)

Hardware

Enough said, the specifications has been described to death by many blogs and techno-sites so I will just give a brief summary of the hardware

The body is made of anodised aluminum alloy at the centre with 2 plastic end covers. It feels very very good at the palm and does not feel heavy. In fact it gives you a very solid build feel, which it is. I came from Quality field so trust me on this, the exterior is very well done.

On the screen, it uses capacitive touchscreen technology on an AMOLED screen and placed the famous Gorilla glass (claimed to be very resistant to scratches and impacts) as the topmost layer of the screen. If you trust the glass enough, you can even use the phone without screen protector

For the rest of the hardware description, I will let the photos do the talking.

12 Mega Pixel Camera sensor (claimed by Nokia to be the biggest sensor used in mobile phones) with 28mm/2.8f Carl Zeiss lens. Oh it comes with Xenon flashlight, so you have strobe flash for photo capturing

The top of the phone comes with mini HDMI port (HDMI adaptor cable included) for connection to HDMI TV/projector. Besides it are the 3.5mm audio jack and power button (acts as forced shutdown when pressed for more than 10 seconds)

Left side is the MicroSD and SIM slots with microUSB port which functions as USB OTG (cable adaptor included) as well as for charging/datasync. The torx screw shown is for the bottom cover where the battery compartment is located. No easy way to replace battery unless you have a torx screwdriver

On the right side of the phone is the Camera button (which can activate the camera app with one press), the lock switch and the volume rocker. The buttons have very good tactile feel.

At the bottom, you have the mic right below the screen, the menu button (acts as task manager when press and hold for 1-2 seconds) and the mini charge port. You may wonder why 2 charging ports on N8. Simple. You can charge your phone while you are using USB keyboard/mouse thru the microUSB port (USB OTG feature). Not a frequent use case considering the massive mass memory (16GB) but useful nevertheless. Touch more on that.

Camera

The Good
- Very very good photo quality from the camera. Certainly a competent replacement for compact cameras
- Xenon flash is able to light up the subject adequately in low light condition.
- Allows geotagging
- Many scene modes to choose from, plus many manual adjustments like Exposure, White Balance, ISO, and face detection
- HD Video quality is really good with decent audio. No video/audio sync issue at all

The Bad
- Photo resolution uploaded via camera/share feature are pretty low as compared to upload it via email on the phone
- The bottom keys on the camera (Option/Exit) is not responsive to touch, esp when camera orientation is in portrait mode.


Here are some example shots:

Landscape Mode

Auto mode with Flash

Close up mode without Flash

Close up mode with flash

Phone/Screen

The Good
- Very good signal reception as compared to my Android phone in the same location = fewer dropped signals
- SMS messages now in threaded mode (finally) in the form of Conversations akin to N900 UI, as well as the old style S60 SMS folders
- SMS emoticons are supported in Conversations
- Voice call quality is superb. Loud and clear.
- Missed call/message/events widget is very useful on the home screen
- Liked the Favorite Contacts widgets, as i can add as many contacts as I can and just swipe to find the contact I want
- Screen is readable even in direct sunlight, as compared to my AMOLED Desire, which is barely readable.
- T9 Prediction on the keypad in portrait mode is good and functional
- Pictures on AMOLED is crisp and colours are adequately saturated. What you see on the N8 will be as brillant & vibrant as seen on LCD monitor. Not over-saturated like Desire, which gives user false sense of photo saturation.

The Bad
- Why the hell Nokia removed the "Slide to Pickup/Reject" feature seen in N97/5800XM? It is one of the best features in S60 5th edition and now it's gone. A step backwards.
- The search in Contacts book is not intuitive. Android/iOS phones, even N900 is able to search the contacts in real time just by typing the name. The search app is ok, but took many steps to achieve the same objective as compared to Android/iOS/Maemo counterpart.
- No choice of portrait qwerty keyboard
- Landscape keyboard is not very intuitive. I kept getting typo errors and the prediction don't help much. Have LOTS of room for improvement, Nokia may want to reference iPhone/Android keyboard for a clearer direction
- No notification icon(s) on Big Clock screensaver. Waste of good screen estate.
- I still experience lags in the UI transitions, even though I don't install much apps (<10).>- To have Cleartype-style anti-aliasing effects on the font display or better font. Current font display feels very pixelated

Multimedia

The Good
- Loudspeaker is really LOUD
- Audio quality from the 3.5mm jack is balanced. Tight bass and clear treble
- Music Player comes with equalizer, which is lacking in Android
- Video Player can play my H.264/263 encoded avi files without re-conversion. Video shown on screen is very sharp and no audio/video sync
- Photo editor is very comprehensive for a mobile phone and workable
- Music Synchronisation is a breeze with Windows Media Player or Ovi Music Player
- HDMI output from the phone is sharp and crisp. Managed to output one Chinese movie to a 40" TV for family viewing and they were impressed by it
- USB OTG is very convenient for transfer to your photos/music/movies to/from flashdrives easliy, although it is not a very common use case for me.

The Bad
- Need to have a ringtone trimmer software built in like Android Music Player
- No external subtitle support for video player
- No ID3 Tag editor built in like the 5th edition Music Player
- The cover flow effect is only for ALL songs category. How about Playlists, Artist, Albums, etc?
- It will be great if there is player control at the saver screen. Save the hassle of unlocking the phone just to change songs. Yes, there's the unlock, but consider those poor dudes (like me) who have remote PIN lock by Exchange mail server remote security features.


Internet/Social Networking
Seriously, this is my main gripe in N8. I see less good than in this area. Nokia has a lot (yes I mean a lot) to catch up

The Good
- Web browser able to play flash items natively
- Able to upload photos to Facebook/Twitter via Social

The Bad
- Still using Flashlite when competitors are already having Flash 10 running on their mobiles
- Web Browser hanged when I surfed heavy sites, must have thanks to the limited RAM yet again
- No popular Photo sites upload (Flickr, Photobucket, etc)
- Social app integration is pretty weak, slow startup, erratic display,
- Nokia messaging a bit dodgy. Multiple photo uploading will prompt for email account but will not prompt if uploading only one photo.
- Email Inbox overview font is very ugly and big (bold). Doesn't blend with the UI look at all. Nokia should consider changing to better font and smaller fonts


Conclusion

After one week of use, considering I'm someone who uses internet apps and surfs extensively on the phone, I went back to Desire as my main phone and N8 as my camera/music player due to the above comments.

You also noticed that I did not touch on Ovi Maps at all, as frankly I have not used it much but I am confident in this application since this app in its earlier versions has already brought me around Thailand using my N95 8GB

Seriously, N8 hardware is uber impressive in terms of build, connectivity and camera optics, but heavily maimed by a dated OS. I strongly believe this phone will shine should it runs on Meego instead of Symbian. I have used N900 (Maemo) before so I can see Meego's potential.

N8, in its current state, is good for people who are looking for solid camera performance that can replace their compact cameras and good multimedia capabilities plus good telephony functions.

However, if you are looking for very internet-centric phone, where you will surf a lot on the phone, then it's better to look at other options.

Of course, I am still hoping in the upcoming updates, the functions/features of the phone will improve cos I certainly will like to use N8 as a main phone when that happens.

But I seriously I will hope Nokia can give the N8 users an option to load Meego instead of Symbian to see if it can bring this phone to the next level (I must be dreaming keke)